The Second Life of Everly Beck: The Tethered Soul Series Book 2

by Laura C. Reden

  She couldn’t.

  The silence stretched between us until I saw the slightest shift in her expression. Her mouth opened to speak, but no words came out. She slowly let her hand fall—a tree in the forest—until she was pointing directly at my chest. “Oh . . . my . . . god,” Beck began.

  My heart felt like it had been hit by a semi-truck. The impact of her remembering me was so poetic, so magical, so memorable. It was better than in my dreams. I couldn’t pry my eyes off of her. Go on, Beck. Say it. Say you’ve missed me. Say you love me. “I,” I started.

  Like clockwork, as summoned by the Devil himself, along came her boyfriend and wrapped a possessive arm around her shoulder.

  “Can I have some?” he asked as he grabbed the bag of skittles from her hand. Beck’s eyes remained on me, and her boyfriend took notice of our undeniable connection. “What’s up? You know this guy?” he asked, frowning at the intensity of the moment. Our bond was so strong, it was tangible.

  Beck’s eyes reluctantly pulled away to look at her boyfriend. “Yeah! You wouldn’t believe it! But this used to be my neighbor when I was a kid!” Beck said, and they looked back at me for confirmation.

  Neighbor? Just a neighbor? It was like a dagger to the back. I never saw it coming. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and remind her of the life we shared—the memories of champagne and grass stains, but everyone was staring, and now was not the time. I resisted the urge and nodded slowly, confirming that, yes, it was true–we used to be neighbors. I had the picture to prove it, and it was right there in my wallet.

  “Holy shit! Easton?” Beck shook her head in disbelief. “I knew I recognized you! What are you doing here?” Beck’s voice was loud and boisterous, and I could tell that this was no act.

  “I’m a student . . . here,” I said and immediately wished I hadn’t. I committed to the lie either way.

  “Oh my god! It’s a small world,” she said, her eyes bursting with wonder.

  It wasn’t small though. It was an immense and infinite world capable of the unthinkable. All kinds of inconceivable things she couldn’t remember.

  “It really is,” I lied, taking in the distrust of her boyfriend. The moment settled, and I knew my time was closing in. I had to do something so that this wasn’t the end. I needed a way into their inner circle. Her inner circle. “Actually, I just moved here. I don’t know anyone, and it’s really something to run into an old friend.” The word friend caught in my throat as if it were laced with acid, and I coughed to help clear the distaste. “Maybe you could show me around sometime?”

  Beck smiled and her eyes lit up like a clear night’s sky, full of stars and promise. “Absolutely! Sorry, how rude of me. This is Brooklyn,” Beck motioned to her friend who was patient and welcoming. “And this is Nolan,” Beck raised her hand to her boyfriend, and he glared at me in return. His expression screamed territorial but there wasn’t an ounce of insecurity. If I looked like him, like I belonged on the cover of a men’s fitness magazine, I probably wouldn’t feel threatened by me either. But little did he know that I already had Beck’s heart.

  “Hey, I’m Easton. Nice to meet you.”

  Beck and her friends turned away, but Beck nodded with her head for me to join them. I crammed the unspent dollar back into my jeans and joined Beck by her side as I clung to the idea that she had not introduced Nolan as her boyfriend. He felt it too, and I wondered if it was a misstep or an intentional withholding.

  “So where are you living now, Easton?” Brooklyn asked. I liked her immediately, she was a kind, gentle soul.

  “Clover.” I watched Beck when I said it, looking for any sign that it meant something to her. If it did, she had one hell of a poker face.

  “Oh, that’s not too far!” Brooklyn nodded approvingly.

  “You guys, Easton and I were best friends when we were kids! Do you remember my trampoline?” Beck leaned in with a wide smile.

  Everyone took a seat at a nearby bench and spread their belongings across the table, taking up real estate. Beck set down a half-eaten bag of Skittles and a Diet Coke.

  “I remember your trampoline and the countless days of summer we spent in your backyard.” I remember marrying you. Not once but twice.

  Beck threw her head back and laughed. “Do you remember when my rabbit scratched your brother, and he flung her at you, and you fell into the pool?” She managed to choke this out between fits of laughter. Not a care in the world. Beck was no longer dying but thriving. It was a Beck I’d never known before—but wanted to.

  “Yes, I remember drowning in your pool. You refused to save me!” I teased her. I knew how to swim, of course, but I pretended to sink to the bottom hoping she would jump in and rescue me. It scared her, though, and I regretted my decision when it was all said and done. The look in her eyes was one I wasn’t expecting. I was sent home after that. The parents had a long talk with us about pool safety that night.

  “I was . . . terrified of the water!” Beck admitted. And I knew why.

  “You still are!” Nolan said.

  “Hey! It’s . . . unnatural. We’re not meant to be underwater, OK?”

  Brooklyn frowned. “You really need to get over that fear. It’s super weird! What kid doesn’t love the pool?”

  Beck lifted her shoulders. Her eyes darted frantically. “I don’t know! Me, I guess?”

  I watched her intently and wondered if she had any memory at all of drowning. My heart broke for her. I imagined there were a lot of unanswered questions and inadequacies buried deep within her. I did the only thing I could think of at the moment, and I changed the subject.

  “I remember we got married that summer.”

  The conversation quieted, and Beck bit her lip and smiled up at me. “I remember that too.” Her voice was endearing. Brooklyn’s eyebrow raised, and Nolan snatched the Skittles out of Beck’s hand, eager to interrupt the memory.

  “Yeah, well, maybe we’ll get married in Sin City next weekend! My birthday gift to you,” Nolan said before emptying the remaining candy into his mouth.

  Beck elbowed him playfully, and Brooklyn made cooing sounds in the background.

  I’d been so busy trying to locate Beck that I didn’t realize my birthday was coming up. Since she and I died in the same accident, on the same day, we shared the same birthday as well. But birthdays were like any other day of the week to me. They stopped being special when you’d had so many of them.

  “Hey,” said Beck, patting my arm—“That means it’s your twenty-first birthday too!” The group was taken aback by this anomaly, and Brooklyn raised her brows in question.

  “Twenty-one!” I said as any first-timer would; with excitement.

  “Hey, Becca, our class is starting in five. We should go,” Brooklyn said. I loved Everly Beck with all my heart, but who was Becca Reed? And how would I get her to remember me? The girls gathered their belongings.

  Lost in thought, I watched my heart walk away on the arm of her friend. What was life throwing at me now? When I thought losing my soulmate was the worst thing that could happen, then this? I find her, and she doesn’t remember me? Was this a cruel joke? Was it even repairable?

  “Dude!” Nolan snapped from the other side of the table. I’d forgotten he was still with me. I glanced at him. He held his hands out like I was supposed to know that Beck was taken and I wasn’t allowed to stare.

  I stole one last glimpse of her before complying. “Sorry, man. What class do you have next?”

  The first thing I did when I got back to the hotel was start a hot shower to rinse away the stench of defeat. When I finally relaxed, I lingered, unable to pull myself away from the scalding water and steam that enveloped me. My eyes cut through the mist, and Beck’s drowning eyes haunted me. The fear of losing her all over again built until my eyes burned with tears and my breath quickened. I wondered if it would have been easier if I hadn’t known Beck’s love at all—easier than looking into her eyes and seeing an empty, forgotten bond. Was Becca Reed only
the shell of a girl I used to know? Used to love? I placed my palms against the cool shower tiles until the tears ran dry.

  It was when I closed my eyes that night that I returned to the nightmare that had been plaguing me. The boulder rolled down the mountainside, picking up speed, and I had nowhere to run. When I tripped and fell flat onto my stomach, the boulder began to crush me.

  Chapter 6

  I didn’t make it to campus until a little before Beck would be out for lunch on Thursday. Not because I hadn’t tried. I did. I sat in my car at 7:00 AM. The motor running, my hands tight on the wheel. I just never made it past park. I like to think of myself as a strong, multi-faceted, capable guy. But no matter how much experience I’d had throughout time, I wasn’t prepared for being in love with someone who looked at me like a stranger. Being forgotten was one of the most painful events I’d experienced. And that was saying a lot.

  I had to win Beck’s heart all over again. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could. Today, my highest hope was that she would take me on a tour around the campus. It was so insignificant, and yet, I wasn’t even confident I could achieve it. A part of me didn’t want to try.

  My stomach was so sick by the time I finally saw Beck that it was difficult to look her in the eye. She seemed well, though—possibly happier than I’d ever seen her. I questioned if I would hold her back in this life. My specialty was being a beacon of light in the lives of the dark and fallen. Now that Beck was thriving, I wasn’t sure that I had anything to offer her. I couldn’t shake the thought of letting her live out her life and finding her in the next one.

  “Are you alright? You seem kind of down,” Beck said.

  “Oh, no. I just didn’t get much sleep. That’s all.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She didn’t buy it. The telltale sign was the ruffle of her brows.

  “Hey, do you think you could give me a tour?” I asked with nothing left to lose. I was surprised when she said yes. It was enough to elevate my mood a notch or two. When I pushed off the bench and we put some distance between us and her friends, I felt even better. Beck and I alone, walking side by side. It was the small things. I had to believe that one of them might spark and later, catch fire.

  Despite the cool spring air, Beck wore a white sundress. It looked amazing on her. It would have looked even better if her boyfriend’s jacket hadn’t been draped over her shoulders.

  “Have you not walked around campus yet?” Beck asked.

  “Um, no!”

  “You must be busy. Do you have a full schedule?”

  I’d not thought this far. “Oh, wait, no I’ve seen this wing. Let’s check out the library? I’ve been dying to see it.”

  “Oh, yeah, OK.” Beck nodded, and we changed course. “I still can’t believe we ran into each other. And here, of all places. I mean, it’s not like we grew up here or anything. It’s so weird,” Beck rambled.

  “Like, it was predestined?” I asked with a smirk.

  Beck looked at me and smiled. Her cheeks flushed pink. It was the first time I felt like I was talking to her. The old her.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” she said.

  “Well, it couldn’t have come at a better time, because, like I said, I just moved here, and I could really use a friend. I’m happy to have found you.” I opened the door for Beck and briefly placed my hand on her back as she passed through.

  “I’m glad to have my friend back too. Um, is there something else going on I should know about?”

  I lowered my gaze to the lobby floor. We were inside the college now, and I needed to keep my voice down. “It’s nothing. I just found out I was adopted, so . . . ”:

  Beck gasped.

  It was kind of a dishonorable move, but I was working from the ground up. Not only were the odds stacked against me, but her picturesque boyfriend was too. I knew she would empathize with the shock of finding out I was adopted, and maybe I’d be in the club again. The Beck and Easton Club of Tethered Souls. It had a nice ring to it.

  “I’m so sorry. Your parents just told you?” Beck asked.

  “Yeah, just recently. Right before I moved here.”

  “And your brother? Is he adopted too?” Beck opened the doors to the library. It was a beautiful sight. Massive and historic. I took a deep breath; I loved the smell of books.

  “Um, yeah. Tanner was adopted too.” I waited for her to confess her adoption.

  “Shit. That must have really thrown you for a loop, huh? Are you going to find your real parents? I mean . . . biological? Sorry!” Beck scrunched her shoulders up to her ears with a pained look on her face. Real parents.

  She really didn’t remember me, or she would have remembered that I didn’t have parents. She never would have faltered, calling parents “real,” just because they shared your DNA. And apparently, she didn’t know she was adopted either. How had she not known this about herself? Why hadn’t her parents told her the truth yet? It would be hard for her when she came to realize the truth. I only wished she had found out about her family sooner. It probably would have made it easier to accept what she now was. Not to mention the fact that it would have made my job a little easier too.

  “No, it’s alright. Um, I don’t think I’m going to look for them,” I said while I ran my hands down the spines on the bookshelf. They weren’t people I’d want to find, even if I had the opportunity.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, why wouldn’t you?” Beck leaned against a wall of books.

  It was a hard question to answer, even if it was a lie. “I don’t think they were fit to be parents. They didn’t want to be found, and I can respect that. I’m just happy they gave me a better chance than what they had to offer.” Only the first part was true—that they weren’t fit parents.

  Beck nodded, her eyes falling on a student walking in our direction. Our private conversation became less intimate, and our connection faltered. She turned around and pulled a book off the shelf and paged through it while she waited for our privacy to return. My eyes burrowed into the back of her head, and I yearned for our connection to return.

  “That’s a good one. You would like it,” I said, coming up behind her.

  Beck’s eyebrows raised. “You’ve read this one?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled. “That’s random.”

  “I’ve probably read most of these books,” I said honestly.

  “Oh wow. You’re a big reader!”

  It was my turn to smile back at her. “I’ve got a lot of time on my hands,” I said. I wish she understood. But she just looked at me in question. After a moment, she grabbed a book from behind her without ever looking at it. “This one?”

  I glanced at the cover. “Yes.”

  Beck stacked the book on top of the other and took off down the aisle. She paused near the end of the fiction aisle and grabbed a small green novella. “This one?”

  I chuckled. “Yes. Though I don’t think you’d like it as much as the other two in your hands,” I said.

  Beck’s eyes slanted, “And what makes you think that? You don’t even know me.”

  “Do you want to read about the Siege of Kazan?” I challenged her.

  Beck’s eyes quickly scanned the back of the book before she bit into her lip and looked back at me with large doe eyes. “No,” she admitted.

  I closed the distance between us. “Beck, you seem to forget that I was your best friend. And at one point in time, I was even your husband.”

  Beck snorted. “Oh my god, Easton! That was like, a lifetime ago!”

  “Precisely,” I said. It took everything I had not to lean in and kiss her. I wondered how it would be received if I did. Right here in the library where fiction ended. “One lifetime ago is not enough to change who you are. I’m sure you’ve changed, Beck. I mean, I know you have, but I still know you to be the little girl you were at eight years old. And I still see my best friend when I look at you.” I stopped myself from bleeding out right there amongst the books. The truth was, I saw so much
more than that. But she wasn’t ready to hear it. Not today, she wasn’t.

  Beck smiled, and her eyes glistened. She placed a hand on my shoulder and pulled me in for a hug. “God, I’ve missed you,” she said. My heart dropped. I wanted to hear it over and over again.

  God, I’ve missed you. It echoed in my head.

  “And if you ever need to talk about your parents or anything, you can call me. OK?”

  “OK. Like anything?”

  Beck pulled away too soon and checked her watch. “Oh, shit! I’m so late!”

  I pretended I too had somewhere to be. “Oh man, where’d the time go?” I looked around, shoving my hands in my pockets.

  Beck shoved the books back into a random spot on the shelf, and I tried not to cringe at the disorder.

  “Hey, a group of us are going to Sin City next weekend to celebrate my birthday. And actually, it’s your birthday too, so you should come!” Beck said as an afterthought.

  Sin City? “Yeah! I’d love to!” It wasn’t my scene, but I’d do anything to be by Beck’s side.

  “This is going to be so much fun! Let me get your number real quick, and I’ll keep you updated,” Beck said as she glanced behind her as if time itself was coming after her. We exchanged numbers in a hurry.

  “I’ll call you,” Beck called out as she charged off to make the remaining bit of her class.

  I smiled and nodded. “I’m looking forward to it!” I called back much too loudly for a library and reaped the consequence when someone shushed me.

  I had woken up with the highest hope of getting a school tour out of Beck. A tiny fraction of time alone with her. What did I get? A lot more than that! A whole weekend with her . . . and her boyfriend. I pushed my back up against the bookshelf. Her boyfriend. What had I gotten myself into now?

  When my questions went unanswered there in the library, I resolved to head out. I’d already fulfilled my purpose of coming to the college today, and since I wasn’t actually a student at Norton University, it was time to be on my way. But not before putting those three books back in their rightful places. I wouldn’t allow Beck to sin by accident.